I’d like to start off by saying that I like to set a higher standard for myself — a higher standard of conduct, a higher standard of work ethic, a higher standard of being a father and a husband and I expect a lot from my players as well,” Priefer said. “My wife and I raise our children this way in terms of our last name and what that means. Remember who you are. In this regard, in this situation, with my comment, I failed. I didn’t just go below the bar. I went way below the bar. I made a mistake. I was wrong. I brought a lot of undue attention to the Minnesota Vikings organization and brought an unwanted distraction, and I apologize. The apology that I spoke about, that I put out on Friday, I want to reiterate that in a very humble and sincere manner.

Priefer went on to say that, “The biggest thing I regret is I brought a lot of bad publicity to the Minnesota Vikings and I felt like I let my family down” but it looks at the situation a positive one, adding, “But I learned a hard lesson, I’ve got to be sensitive to other people in what I say and that’s not going to happen again.”

The Vikings seem hopeful that Priefer will fulfill his end of the bargain and gave the old, “Hey, I’ve made mistakes, you all have made mistakes, let’s all forget about this mess” routine.

As the Vikings saga drags on and new outrages build this week — Dungy, Rice — the pressure from the league to make this go away as quickly and quietly must be immense. But hey? At least we’re talking about people being at camp today, right? RIGHT?

why would you apologize for bringing shame to the Vikings? this is Lutheran country and they are a historically embarrassing team. Bringing shame to the Vikes is the equivalent of:

batteries to the Eagles
homoerotic thoughts of Ditka to the Bears
bladed weaponry to the Raiders
a brand new bandwaggony jersey to the Seahawks
BBQ stains on your clothes to the Chiefs
morbid obesity to the Colts / Packers / lots of teams actually

“Here’s the thing,” Priefer did not go on to say, “I realize that bringing shame on this franchise is a pretty high bar to clear, or a frighteningly low bar to slip under, whichever way you want to look at it, assuming you do want to look at it all, which I don’t recommend, because it is almost too awful to contemplate, really.
“I remember when the suspension was handed down,” Priefer did not continue to a press corps momentarily struck dumb with moral horror, “and the full weight of my actions became apparent to me. I had to pull over twice on the drive home just to sob. When I got home, my wife, my sweet, loving wife, came up to me and hugged me and asked me what was wrong. I told her, ‘I’ve done something truly shameful.’ She looked at me with abject horror until I said, ‘At work.’ I’ll never forget the relief on her face when she said ‘Well, yeah. You’re the special teams coach for the Minnesota Vikings, so…’ Then she looked really mad and slapped me. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘Don’t do that to me! I thought you’d had an affair, and when you walked in I was sure someone had died. Whew!’ ‘My pride has died,’ I said. She just shook her head for a long while and then walked away. Ah, marriage.
“I got to wondering, though, if she might not have a point,” Priefer did not say to a press corps now openly taking bets on how much worse this could get. “I mean, this is a team that somehow fucked up dubious sexual relations on a boat, which you’d think would be a core competency for any team named after vikings. Our owner looks like Groucho Marx on a meth-bender and was found in court to have been animated by an ‘evil motive’ while conning business partners out of the profits of a New Jersey apartment complex in violation of the state RICO act. That’s right, Zygi Wilf (which I can only assume is an anagram for something) makes the owner of the Browns looks honest.
“Our new stadium was over budget before it broke ground, and that’s without counting the fact that we talked people into that avian abattoir on the promise that it would get $35m in funding from gambling, of which that endeavor raised precisely fucking bupkis.
“I could, of course, go on, even if I focused only on player indiscretions,” Priefer did not continue in a stronger voice as the assembled reporters paid out people who took the over on how much worse it could get and scrambled to set a new line. “This team is not terrifying, like the Raiders or the Ravens. It is not completely shambolic, like the Browns and Bills. But for utter, low-down, lousy turpitude, you just cannot beat the Vikings. And it’s a good thing, too, because you can beat us at pretty much everything else.
“WHIZZINATOR,” Priefer did not say loudly into the microphone while looking archly around before resuming.
“But perhaps it would best if I spoke squarely to the issue at hand. What I did was wrong. It caused a distraction, in the same way that Chris Kluwe’s original actions caused a distraction. That distraction, uh, distracted us. Apparently, we’re very distractable. Can I say in my heart of hearts that that wasn’t part of why we shitcanned him? No, I cannot. We kicked his ass to the curb, and had one blissful, distraction-free season in which we could focus on going 3-13 and pissing away the talents of the greatest tailback of his generation, a man I can only assume wronged someone terribly in a former life to inherit this particular Sisyphean ordeal.
“When Leslie went, I was sure I was a goner, too; after this Kluwe thing, who in their right mind would keep me around? Mike Zimmer, that’s who, and in so doing he made himself an accessory after the fact to the stone-cold dog-fucking we made of this whole sorry business. I’ll always admire him for that. Or, at least, think it was weird.
“So, yes, I was stupid. It’s a race to the bottom to determine whether I was more closed-or-simple-minded. I spoke and acted without thinking. I was, in the end, grotesquely unprofessional; I was a ghastly caricature, an unwittingly savage parody of someone attempting to fulfill a job on a professional football team.
“I therefore maintain that I acted only in the finest traditions of the Minnesota Vikings franchise,” Priefer did not continue to the awe of all assembled. “If you wanted a team possessed of a rational intelligence and foresight, any degree of professional competence, and something that might at least be mistaken in bad light for a moral compass, go and root for the fucking Giants.
“Thank you for coming, and get fucked,” Priefer did not conclude as the press corps rose as one and cheered.